Trapped
by skyfare
Summary: Takes place during and post untethered. First story published so please read and review! Could be taken as BA but doesn't have to be. COMPLETE.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N. Okay, so I've never done this before. I'm trying to improve my writing, though, so I thought I'd give it a shot. Please read and review and let me know what you think! Oh, and I have six more chapters of this to post, but if it's not any good then I'll wait to post them until I can revise it. **

_Chapter One_

Time off? Please. What is he going to do with a vacation? Go to some sticky, crowded beach and sit on a towel, rubbing sunscreen on his nose, wound so tightly he'd manage to clear a solid area around himself by virtue of his tenseness, his uneasiness? Right. He hates the beach, anyway. He can't go spend the week with his mother, because she's—he can't do that, anymore (dead). And other family? Hmm. Maybe he'll go hang out with his junkie of a brother. He's had a lot of practice skulking in alleyways anyway, searching for criminals or doing undercover jobs, so why not go over to the other side for real, for once? Maybe some pot would help him sleep, and he hasn't slept in—God, _years_, it feels like. So that's the plan, then. Go get high with his brother for a week, for his _vacation_.

He nearly laughs out loud, then he realizes that both Ross and Eames (Eames) are still staring at him.

"I think you need some time off more than you realize, Detective." Ross's voice comes at him, attacking, and nearly knocks him over. Eames grabs his arm to steady him and he closes his eyes, pretending that he's not here, not anywhere, lost in space and drifting off unanchored, unmoored. Untethered. "Take at least a week. Don't try to come back until you're ready."

He gives what might have been, in some lifetime, a nod, but it just feels like his head bobbing on his shoulders. Ha. Bobbing. The act of him, of Bobby—to be Bobby is to bob, bobbing—one has bobbed (past participle), one will bob, one is bobbing—"Bobby!"

Eames. He twitches himself back out of his thoughts and watches her as she runs her fingers nervously across her chin, watching him. They are back at their desks, he realizes. His desk where he sits every day and most nights watching her type away and root through files and impatiently sweep her bangs out of her face. Talk on the phone. He loves watching her talk on the phone, because she gets that little innocent smirk when she's trying to wheedle information out of people, and sometimes she'll look up at him and not—smile, exactly, but she'll have that gleam in her eyes and he has to sink back into his chair (_my partner's hard on the furniture_) and just _watch _her.

Phone. Talk on the…where's his cell?

"You should really get away for a couple of days." Eames is talking to him again, quietly, turning her back on the squad room of cops watching so it's just them, just him and her, in this insulated bubble of privacy they can sometimes create at will to block out the rest of the world.

His phone is in his pocket. He lays it on the desk, giving Eames a Look and wondering how long she's been talking, because no matter how much he—likes her, he supposes, and respects her, and admires her, how she can keep herself together so well as opposed to himself, always throwing books and knocking great stacks of files off desks and yelling pointlessly at Ross—despite all that, sometimes he's so off in his head that it takes him a minute to realize when she's talking to him.

"Yeah. Maybe I'll take a cruise or something." He nearly laughs as Eames' eyes widen, because the very idea is absurdity in itself, but he can't laugh because he can't _believe _his stupidity. This entire mess over Donny and he'd forgotten, briefly, _about _Donny. He cocks his head and nods at Eames and collects his coat before heading out to the street to take the subway home. The entire time his mind is snapping out a plan, the pieces working into place until he _knows_, with absolute certainty, what he will do. What he _must _do. He couldn't save his mother, he can't save his brother, but maybe he can salvage his last attempt at a family by helping his nephew.

He takes the subway back to his apartment and spends the rest of the day preparing and trying not to think about how, in a couple of hours, Eames (Eames) will show up at his door with (definitely) coffee and (probably) Chinese takeout, and he will tell her of his plan and she will bite her lip and look worried and ask questions and then agree to help him.

Which is nearly exactly what happens (she brings Thai).


	2. Chapter 2

_Chapter Two_

Brick through glass. Sodium amytal. Mark Ford Brady. Fingertips still sore from the pin scratching his prints away. Green beans (lima beans?). He can't remember. It all swirls together in a rough blur but it doesn't matter because he is so fucking _thirsty_ and at some point the counting stops being just for show, because he just needs something to hold to right now, something strong and sturdy and secure and safe, and usually that would be his own stubbornness or else Eames, but his guards are worn down and Eames isn't coming and he sure as hell can't go to her right now, oh no, the leather bands around his torso and ankles and wrists ensure that he is to be separated from his Eames as surely as his job ensures that they will never be anything other than partners, and so instead of (Eames) and a life and (maybe) children he has counting and a cracked, unending thirst and a serial killer for a father and schizophrenia running maybe (maybe) not through his mind (yet) but definitely through his genetics and a druggie who can't take care of his own son for a brother and harsh florescent lights for a view and the whirling of his brain that will not cease and quit and desist so maybe he is (finally) going insane after all.

He wants to cry but he can't, because that will dehydrate him even more. He wants to tell the guards (fuckers—he wants to _kill _them) and the warden the truth, that he is a detective with the Major Case Squad, but no one would believe him. He wants to be back on a crime scene with his binder, sniffing dead bodies. He wants _Eames_. He wants to get Donny _out _of this hellhole and straightened out and _safe_.

The tears do come at that last thought, unstoppable, and so he is like this, crying and exhausted and strapped down, when Eames bursts into the room and begins yelling for the guards to come and _get these fucking restraints off of him_. "Bobby, oh God, Bobby." Her voice tumbles out in a rush as the guards come in and lazily begin to unchain him. He thinks, he _thinks_, he actually sees her bare her teeth at the guards and flash her jacket open so her gun is visible on her hip, because suddenly they're moving a lot faster but he's not positive, because who knows anymore?

Eames lays her hand on his wet unshaven cheek and he closes his eyes, half afraid to believe that it's all not just happening in his head. "Water," he whispers, partially as a test of what is real, partially because he needs it so badly he almost doesn't care if he is, in fact, insane. And although his voice is nearly dead from disuse, Eames hears him.

"Get him some water!" she snaps at the guards and one rushes off.

One chain is stuck around his ankle and the other guards are fumbling at his feet to get it off, shaky and nervous under Eames' glare. He kicks feebly and feels a muted slice of satisfaction when his toes come into contact with a rib and one of the bastards winces, but they undo the rest of the chains and he is free, finally—well, nearly free, his muscles have stiffened up so much he doesn't think he can move on his own. Trapped in his own body. And then there is his mind to contend with, after all, and his past.

Finally, after the guard comes back in with his water (oh God, _ice_) and Eames helps him painfully sit up, he lifts the glass to his mouth with a shaking hand and _drinks_, spilling most of it down his shirt but it doesn't matter because Eames is already screaming (_she wanted me to scream, so I didn't_) for more.

"What have they done to you?" Eames mutters, rubbing his back and shoulders with a kind of rough frenzied concern. "Fuck, Bobby."

More water comes and this time Eames steadies his hand with hers as he drinks. The heat of her small, strong fingers against his combined with the unbelievable rush of sweetness that is water finally convinces him that this is actually happening, that however tenuous his hold on reality is it hasn't severed, yet. That is Ross in the corner, looking at him with what might be disbelief and what might be pity, calling for a bus. This is Eames leaning her head against his so her hair swings forward across his face and no one can see that he's crying again, because Eames came and there's water and he can sit up even though it feels like it's destroying him to do so.

"Shh, Bobby, it's okay, it's going to be okay. We'll get you to the hospital and you'll be all right." Her voice breaks and she turns his head and kisses his temple at his hairline, staying so close to him because he isn't going to pull away anytime soon, not when he can't even move on his own.

"Donny," he whispers.

"He—he escaped. They took him to the hospital and he got away."

_Thank God_, he thinks, as he thinks _Oh no_. "Have to—find him," he chokes, wiping his hand across his eyes and getting his unwieldy fingers tangled in her hair.

"Bus is here." Ross's voice breaks in, shattering them apart. Eames pulls away gently and the paramedics begin to work to maneuver him on to the stretcher.

"We have people out looking for your nephew," Eames says. _My nephew_. She didn't use those words by accident, he thinks blindly as a blood pressure cuff slides up his arm and begins tightening. _I have Donny_. _Eames_.

"Oh God, Eames." He doesn't realize he spoke out loud until he sees the look on her face. He closes his eyes so he doesn't have to see it.

She rides with him in the ambulance—"He's my _partner_," she furiously tells the paramedics trying to convince her to ride up to the hospital with Ross—but they don't speak, though they do hold hands. He manages to rub her fingers with his thumb, once, but that gesture tires him out so much that he doesn't move again until they reach the hospital.


	3. Chapter 3

_Chapter Three_

He is released from the hospital two days later, a little gaunter, a little grayer, a little more scarred, but rehydrated and free and alive. He is suspended, of course. He thinks he should have seen it coming but he didn't, not really, and when he automatically wakes up at 6:15 the day after being released he feels a tiny crushing blow that he can't bring Eames coffee and sit at his desk and focus his mind on whatever the current case is. Eames would come over after work, he knows, it would just take one little phone call, but… Yeah. She had stayed with him the entire first night he was in the hospital, finally falling asleep around midnight in the chair beside his bed. She slept there for a couple of hours until a nurse came in and pushed the empty hospital bed on the other side of the room over beside him, guided Eames to it, winked at Goren, and left again.

Eames hadn't objected. She had stripped her jacket, belt, and shoes off, threw her watch and police badge on the chair, and crawled into the bed. She was out in a minute, and he had watched her sleep until another nurse came in with more drugs, sleeping pills and tranqs and muscle relaxers, and made him take them, standing by his bed until he passed out.

But in the morning he told Eames to go home. He would call her, he said. He just needed some time to think, to comprehend everything.

He hasn't talked to her since.

He gets up even though he can't go into work, has a cigarette, showers, has another cigarette and goes out into the streets, wandering them for hours and checking every possible place a 19 year old bipolar fugitive might conceivably hide.

Nothing. He's probably long gone by now. Hopped a bus to Cleveland or hitchhiked to California. Joined a cult for the secrecy and protection. Knifed in a street fight.

Or maybe he's moving, too, looking for Goren. Maybe he should stand still so Donny can find him.

So he stops. Middle of a busy sidewalk, people flowing around him, but he doesn't get elbowed or shoved or even complained to because everyone finds him intimidating, his size, the glazed look in his eyes, his general aura of unkemptness.

Maybe if he stands here and waits Donny will find him.


	4. Chapter 4

_Chapter Four_

He stands for about an hour before his ankles threaten to collapse on him and he has to drag himself back to his apartment. What a waste of a day. What a waste of a _life_. Time matters so much immediately after someone goes missing—the longer you go without finding someone the less likely it is that you'll find them (he remembers thinking that and then having to duck off to the bathroom to throw up when Eames went missing). He's already wasted two days in the hospital, and who knows how long strapped down on that table—_don't think about that_—and now today, his fist real chance to do something constructive towards finding Donny and he spent it standing on a sidewalk.

He checks his cell phone again, but the only missed calls are from Eames and he doesn't want to think about that now. He _can't _think about that now. He can't be distracted, and she is the biggest distraction existing.

_Focus_, he tells himself, standing in the middle of his living room and trying not to think about Eames, or the bottle of muscle relaxers on his nightstand that would undoubtedly let him sleep, or about being _trapped_, dehydrating, pinned down to that slab of metal and ignored.

He drinks deeply from the bottle of water he's taken to carrying with him, trying to sort and categorize and prioritize all the thoughts floating around in his brain. He can't do it, though, he can't fit everything away like he always does, because he's exhausted and scared and worried and then there's a key turning in his lock. He knows, in the second before the knob turns and the door opens, that it is either the landlord coming for the rent check or Eames, and although he has yet to pay for this month he would bet all the money he has (not much) that it's Eames.

His brain does not disappoint him (yet). Eames surveys him from the doorway, raking her eyes over him so fiercely and probing that he feels as exposed as a gunshot wound to the chest, bleeding out into the air.

"You didn't call." Her tone is carefully neutral as she shuts the door behind her and crosses the room to stand in front of him.

"I was out looking for Donny." The sound of his voice spilling out of his throat would surprise him if he had the energy to be surprised.

"Find anything?"

He shakes his head bitterly and she does that thing with her eyes again, sweeping him over so he feels utterly naked.

"How do you feel?" she asks finally, breaking the silence.

He shrugs. "You know."

Eames nods, then presses her lips together and shakes her head. "Actually, I don't. Not really." He stares at her for a minute until she says quietly, "You could tell me."

He thinks about it. He does. But the idea is so alien, the concept so foreign and outrageous that he wishes he could somehow express to her how obscene it would feel to tell her, but in order to express that to her he would have to express that to her, and thinking about it is beginning to give him a headache.

"I don't think you'd want to hear it," he says finally, after it becomes apparent that this isn't a conversation he can kill off simply with silence, that she expects a response and will wait until she gets one.

"I didn't think you'd want to hear it after I was kidnapped, either." She struggles with saying the last part and he begins to pace.

"You can't compare the two, Eames! _You_ were—taken; I threw myself into what happened." His ankles do give out, now—nine hours of standing and walking and standing some more plus his current shaky disbelief that Eames could even _think _about these two events concurrently causes him to collapse on to the couch, tired and anxious and angry and uncertain.

Eames lets it go. She lets a lot of things go with him lately, he thinks, and as she sinks down to the couch beside him he thinks that it's not that she doesn't care anymore (although God knows he couldn't blame her if that would be the case) but that she's tired, too.

"Thank you for coming—to Tates." He is hesitant, tripping over the words, but it's got to be said and (and) it's an effective way to change the conversation.

But Eames (Eames) is silent, and he can't read her (why can't he read her, when he can read everyone else?). "And now," he adds so softly he doubts she can hear him. "For coming now."

"I couldn't leave you alone to sulk," she mutters, propping her feet up on his coffee table and staring out into space in front of her.

He would smile at her irritated tone, but right now nothing's funny. It's all too bleak. He thinks of his suspension, of the family tree that runs constantly through his head now (serial killer rapist schizophrenic addict), and that—_that_—nearly makes him laugh at all the impossible disasters of his life piling on top of each other, coalescing into a big ball of misery. Isn't laughter tied to tears? he thinks suddenly. Some study, there was a study done proving that they two are basically the same action influenced by different emotions. So maybe (probably) he just wants to laugh because he wants to cry (again), and he _can't _cry (again) in front of Eames, because she didn't even cry after she was attacked until days after getting out of the hospital (and in his arms, then), the night before they watched that father kill himself in front of his little girl, as it happened. And it was so painful watching Eames (Eames) cry, because Eames barely ever cries, nearly as painful as watching the gun pointed at her. He remembers that distinctly; it was one of the memories he pulled out and reexamined while strapped down, and even though it was more than a year ago he still gets nauseous remembering the look in her eyes at the gun, recalling the blind panic of _needing _the gun turned on to him so she would be safe. Odd how much he valued life, then, how quietly amazed and grateful to be alive he was underneath the sickening knowledge that, for the rest of her life, that little girl will think of brains and blood whenever she thinks about her father or hears someone else talk about their father or hears the _word _father. He knows this, because for him, now, every time anything remotely father-related comes up he thinks of Brady and those women, the victims, and his own mother, bruised and scarred and scared and pregnant with him, and he then just wants to turn his fucking brain _off _for a little while—not permanently, mind you, he likes being sane (is he?)—but just for a couple of hours, a mini-vacation from himself.

"I don't like your place," Eames says suddenly. He does laugh now, because while he was wrestling with guns and rapists and blood in his mind she was contemplating his fading green wallpaper and the overstuffed bookcases in his living room.

"Kick me when I'm down," he says, trying to see his apartment as she must see it. Bland, impersonal, a place to stash things and gulp down meals before running after criminals. "What don't you like about it?"

"It doesn't feel like a home," she murmurs.

He passes a hand over his eyes, rubs his mouth. "I don't quite know what to say to that."

"Let's go somewhere else." Eames sits up and turns to him, whisking her bangs back behind her ears (God, he missed that). "Like…a break. A mini-vacation. It's Friday and I have the weekend off—let's get away for a while."

She sounds so confident, so sure that two days away will solve their problems that he hesitates before speaking. "I can't. I have to find Donny."

"I'll help you," Eames says, her voice low. "We don't have to go far. We'll stay in New York. But we'll go upstate, and we can talk to some of the people at Tates again, maybe, and we can see if he made any friends with any of the people who came in and out there—delivery people, the cleaning staff—and we'll figure out what to do."

"You're not serious." She begins to glare at him and he hurriedly modifies his tone, because on top of everything else he _can't _have Eames mad at him. "You're serious?" She nods, rolling her eyes at him. "And do what, exactly? Go to some spa at night and have massages after a day of walking the streets? Play community Bingo with the rest of the crowd at the B & B before we head up to Tates? And—" his voice lowers. "And since when do we take trips together?"

"I don't know! It doesn't matter, can't you see?"

No. No, he can't, and he feels bad that Eames is getting flustered, but he remains absolutely fucking _bewildered _at this new, let's-do-all-these-things-_together_ Eames.

"You—Bobby, you need to get away. Just for a bit. A weekend. Remember how I stayed with you for a couple of days after I got out of the hospital?"

"Remember how you fought it like hell?" he mutters, recalling the two am phone call when she gave in and agreed to drive out to his place.

"See how it feels to be the other person?"

He rubs his face with his hand, closing his eyes because she's still even bringing up their—events—at the same time. "Eames…"

"_Bobby_."

He holds up his hands in defeat. "Okay. Okay. Can't…can't we just go to your place for a couple of days?"

She shakes her head.

"Why?"

Her voice is quiet when she finally speaks. "Because I need a break too."


	5. Chapter 5

**A/N So I'm a little late with the disclaimer, but here it is: I don't own them, I'm not making any money from this, blah blah blah. **

_Chapter Five_

Eames waits until he gathers a few things: clothes, mostly, and the book he's currently rereading (Book Four of Proust's _Swann's Way_) before driving over to her place so she can do the same (minus the dead French authors). He wants to wait in the car while she goes inside, mainly because every time he's inside her house now he pictures her finding her bird missing and then being—taken, but she insists that he comes inside with her. "Afraid I'm going to run away?" he jokes (tries to joke).

"Yeah."

Well. He gets out of the car and follows her inside. "At least you're honest," he mutters.

She flashes him a quick tense smile and he feels unstable again, so he sits on her couch and tries not to look at the place where her bird cage once sat while she gets ready.

She comes out ten minutes later with a small green canvas bag slung over her shoulder and her black leather jacket over her arm. She's dressed differently, too, he notices. She's changed out of her work clothes into jeans and a sweatshirt, and she looks about 23 again.

"Ready?"

"Are you _sure_ you want to do this?" he asks, remaining on her couch.

She taps her foot and puts her hand on her hips. "Goren." Interrogation voice. "I'm positive. Let's _go_."

He has to look away from her. "Why are you doing this?"

Eames sits down beside him with a sigh and puts her arms around his neck, holding him close to her.

Although he still feels awkward his body automatically relaxes against hers, and after a second his arms go around her back and his hands come to rest on her waist.

"This doesn't exactly answer my question," he murmurs into her hair.

So she tightens her arms around him and holds on, pressing her face into the side of his neck.

He doesn't want to pull away from her, ever, and that thought makes him gently untangle himself from her after one final squeeze.

"Convinced?" Eames (_Eames_) asks him, standing up and grabbing her bag as if nothing had happened.

He resists the urge to turn facedown into her couch and cry himself to sleep, instead standing up and hovering his hand behind her back, not actually touching her. "Let's go, then."


	6. Chapter 6

**A/N. Thanks for all the nice reviews! There will be one more chapter after this, probably, and then maybe a sequel.**

_Chapter Six_

Two hours later, Eames pulls into the parking lot of a secluded hotel upstate. They get out of the car silently, and collect their things, silently, and although he's used to and comfortable with silence generally, he's not used to it with Eames. They don't talk a lot, not constantly like some of the other detectives in their squad, but they've always had conversations before. Work, her family, weekend plans, books, movies, ancient Etruscan history, handwriting analysis, etc. But now, he doesn't have any idea what to say, and she apparently doesn't feel like talking either, and he's beginning to wonder if this is how the entire weekend is going to go.

Checking in is also awkward. "Only one vacancy," the girl at the desk tells him cheerfully.

"That's fine," Eames says curtly. "We'll take it." She dares him with a look to protest so he keeps his mouth shut and goes over to a chair in the lobby area to wait until Eames gets the key and they can go up to their room.

It _is _nice, he has to admit. Cozy. There's one king sized bed in the corner, covered by a giant quilt and taking up most of the left side of the room, and then on the right side there's a little plaid couch and a chair facing a small television set.

Eames kicks her shoes off and disappears into the bathroom. He hears the water begin to run and instantly all sorts of shower-related Eames images flood his brain (and his body). So he gets up, digs out the notebook he tossed in his bag, and begins to plan. He's never been a list-maker; he prefers to keep it all up in his head where random, seemingly impossible connections can occur. But nothing's occurred so far, so maybe it's time to try something new. Something different.

He's halfway through a lit of questions for the assholes up at Tates (much harder to write than he originally thought; he has to force his hand not to tremble and the memories to recede) when Eames comes out of the bathroom and leans over his shoulder to see what he's doing. Cherry blossoms, he thinks automatically, inhaling the scent of her damp hair.

"You make lists now?" she asks, amusement in the beginning of her sentence but then fading towards the end as she realizes just how desperate he must be to need something physical to hold on to, something that isn't just in his mind.

"I thought I'd give it a try."

She rests his hand on his shoulder and he thinks suddenly that although he likes this side of Eames that he rarely sees during work, the side comfortable with touching and closeness, it's all just bad timing. This whole…it's all bad timing. His mother dying. Frank emerging with a son. His suspension; their vacation.

"It's getting late. We should get some sleep before tomorrow."

He nods. _If only_. "I'm just going to take a shower first." He pulls away from her and stands up, avoiding her worried look as he heads for the bathroom.

When he emerges fifteen minutes later, clean but not refreshed, he finds Eames (Eames) making a bed for herself on the couch.

"Take the bed." His voice comes out so quietly Eames has to stare at him for a second before she comprehends what he'd said.

"Bobby, please. There's no way in hell you'd fit on the couch."

"No, really—"

"I'm not going to argue with you about _this_, too. _Take the bed_."

Tired, he thinks. She does sound tired. "Good night, Eames."

"'Night." She gives him a tight smile and flicks the light out, leaving him to blindly feel his way over to the bed. Sleep seems like an impossibility, but after a few hours of turning and fidgeting and listening to Eames' soft breathing, his eyes close and he somehow drifts off.

Lights. No, _light_. One giant florescent light directly above him, beating down on him and broiling the water out of his bones until his body no longer contains the standard 70% water of human composition but merely 18 or 19%, it feels like, and he can hear the guards laughing at his pleas for water, water, _water_. A band of fire encircles his torso, his ankles, his wrists, his skin chafed and rubbed raw from his useless fighting of the restraints. He is trapped, his claustrophobia so intense he's choking on it, it's smothering him until he's struggling to breathe and he's all, _all _alone with his brain, the organ he's always treasured/feared the most, because although it enables him to solve the puzzle of complex crimes and get inside the criminal's head it could also turn on him at any minute, betraying him, and that minute appears to be now, because he can't stop the litany of images flooding through his brain and it's all _too much_. Eames isn't coming because she's finally given up on him, and his other identity as a detective is gone, leaving him with this ridiculous existence where he is insane and he has a missing nephew and everyone is _gone_.

He wakes himself up with a shudder so deep and violent it feels like his body is coming apart. _Water_. He scrambles out of bed, staggering in the darkness and trying to be quiet so he doesn't wake Eames, but he needs water so badly he doesn't much care about anything else.

It takes him forever to find the taps of the sink in the bathroom, his fingers scrabbling uselessly at the basin and sides of the sink before finding purchase. The taps slide on with a faint gritty screech and he plunges his face to the spout, sucking down the lukewarm water so fast he chokes on it and gets the hiccups. Loud, obnoxious, _embarrassing _hiccups, high pitched and creaky, as if the sounds from his throat are shattering his esophagus into pieces on the way up. He locks the door and leans back against it, sliding down until he's sitting on the floor, where he can rub his ankles and wait for the respiratory spasms to subside.

He waits until his hiccups are gone and then hauls himself up off the floor and goes back out to their room.

Eames is sitting on the armrest of the couch with her head bent forward, examining her knee. Waiting for him. "Are you okay?"

"Fine." He weaves unsteadily past her and drops back down to the bed, sitting on the edge but not laying back down, because sleep is impossibly far off and Eames is awake at two in the morning because of him and this is how everything is going to be now.

Eames gets up and sits down beside him on the bed. He watches the pale skin of her bare shoulders—she's dressed in a white tank top and charcoal gray sweatpants—until she leans forward and sideways so she can see his face, turning one of his most famous interrogation techniques on him. "Bad dream?"

He's so tired. "Yeah."

"Do you want to talk about it?"

"No." The thought of talking about it, of reliving it yet again, coats the back of his mouth and throat with a thin dry film of bile.

"Okay."

They sit for a while in the glow of the moonlight spilling across the room from the window by the bed, until he gets up. "Take the bed, Eames. I won't be able to sleep anymore."

"It's two-thirty. We've got a lot of night left yet, Bobby."

_Don't I know it_, he thinks to himself. "I know how I am. You go back to sleep. I'm sorry I woke you up."

She reaches out and tugs on his wrist, gently, until he yields and sits back down. The next thing he knows is the pressure on his shoulders from her hands forcing him down into his mattress. He obeys automatically, his mind blank from being caught off guard. "What are you doing?"

Eames lies down beside him so he's trapped (but not _trapped_) between her back and the wall before she answers. "I'm doing for you what you did for me. You helped me sleep," she adds when he doesn't respond. "After Jo…I'm repaying the favor."

"You don't owe me anything." His voice in the darkness feels like it's attacking her.

"Don't be stupid." Her voice over her shoulder attacks him right back and he can't help but to smile, a little. "I'm doing this because I want to, even if it's not helping. It makes me feel like I'm doing something possibly constructive."

"You are helping me," he says softly. And even though all he can see right now is the muscular line of her shoulder and her back, he knows she's smiling, a little, too.

"Good."

"But you keep making comparisons to what happened to you." She stills, and he knows she's not smiling anymore. "It's…nothing like what happened to you. And you _never _talk about what happened to you, usually, and now you've brought it up more this week than in the entire last year."

He waits for her response. Waits some more. Finally pokes her in the shoulder blade. "Eames."

"I've been thinking about it," she says at last. "I don't know why. Maybe it was just seeing you strapped down to the table like that—you were trapped too."

He shudders involuntarily and she feels it and rolls over so she's facing him. "I can't even begin to imagine what you went through," he whispers. "At Tates—it was nowhere _near_—"

"We're not competing to see who had the worse time of it," Eames cuts him off, and there's just enough metal and ice in her voice to remind him that she still finds it hard to talk about. "But I know what it's like to be trapped. To be…to _feel _helpless. And I think that seeing you feeling that for yourself brought some of it back for me."

"I'm sorry." His voice shakes, and she props herself up on an elbow to see his face.

"It's not your fault."

But he still brings his hands up to cover his face, because he's going to tell her what he's never told her before (one of the things, anyway), and he can't simultaneously look at her and talk.

"I was out of my fucking mind when Jo had you," he whispers. "Worst feeling of my life. I didn't know what to do, I didn't know if I could believe or trust Declan, and everything was so…" He has to pause so his voice stays even. "I would rather spend the rest of my life on that table then relive even a single second of that day. I just…imagining what you were going through, not knowing if—not knowing, was so…" His voice does break as Eames makes a small anguished sound.

He opens his eyes to find Eames stark pale and trembling above him and a tsunami of guilt washes over him. "God, I'm _sorry_," he whispers, horrified that his selfishness of needing to tell her had overridden her tendency to flinch, still, every time her kidnapping is brought up.

She shakes her head mutely but lays her head down on his chest and breathes harshly, irregularly. He hangs on to her, crushing her against him and rocking them back and forth until they both stop shaking. Even then he doesn't let go of her. "I'm sorry," he whispers again, letting one hand travel up to her neck so he can gently rub the back of her head with his thumb.

"Apologize again and I'll knee you in a very sensitive area." Eames words, but not her tone—the usual sarcasm is transferred into a tight breathless sadness. But she doesn't pull away, so he begins rubbing her back with the hand not currently tangled in her hair, sliding his fingers and palm over muscle and skin with a reassuring steadiness that he does not feel.

She doesn't make a sound for so long that his hand falters, because he's not sure if this is appropriate or if it's crossing the lines and boundaries they've set up. "Don't stop," she murmurs into his shoulder, her hands clutching the material of his shirt. "Just…don't stop."

"I won't. I won't."

She shifts so she's not lying directly on top of him anymore but keeps her head buried in the hollow of his shoulder. He keeps rubbing her back, even when her breathing softens and she relaxes against him, warm and alive, even when she raises her head and gives him a soft crooked kiss on his jaw before falling back to sleep.

He doesn't sleep again for the rest of the night but he does continue to rub her back, switching hands occasionally when one falls asleep, memorizing her by his touch.


	7. Chapter 7

**A/N My internet's been down for a couple of days (freaking dial up), so hopefully this will post. This chapter was the hardest one to write and I still think some of it sounds awkward, but I'm just letting it go (my natural obsessive-compulsive tendency is to pick everything to death until it's all just horrible), so I hope it isn't too bad. However, the sequel to this is coming along pretty well, so I should have the first part posted in the next couple of days, if the gods of dial up are being friendly.**

_Chapter Seven_

Eames watches him so carefully as she pulls into the parking lot of Tates that he's become perfectly still under her gaze, afraid if he relaxes he'll twitch or shudder or flinch or somehow otherwise indicate that he's feeling anything other than fine. And after his little display of clinging to her last night he certainly doesn't want to burden her with more of his unwieldy emotions, so he keeps his mouth shut and gets out of the car wordlessly.

"Have your list ready?"

"Gave up on it," he mutters. "Stupid idea." They have forsaken pronouns and the niceties of the beginnings of sentences and cut straight to the important things, because he can't focus on anything other than the task at hand (pound information out of anyone he possibly can) and everything else seems to have fallen on to the side.

"Who do you want to talk to first?" Eames has to nearly jog to keep up with him but she stays even by his side and their pace never falters. "The warden, the guards, other patients…"

"I was thinking his roommate. That is, if they let us in."

"They'll let us in." Quietly confident.

"How do you know?"

"How are they going to stop us? Call the cops?"

That earns a smirk from him, and she glances over sideways to see it, raising her eyebrows.

But she is wrong. Well, half wrong. They get in easily enough, with a flashed badge at the other cops milling around the scene and a duck under the yellow crime scene tape wound around the door, but no one is inside except other cops and a few lost-looking reporters. No warden. No guards. No Donny's roommate.

No _Donny_.

He feels like he wants to cry _again_. He can't imagine what's going on with his body, because he cries about as often as Eames cries (he assumes), which is to say, rarely.

"What the hell _happened_?" he manages to say to a cop jotting down notes on a clipboard.

"They closed the place up. Some serious shit went down—apparently this idiot from Major Case got himself locked up in here and they chained him up."

"You don't say," Eames murmurs, keeping her eyes wide and fascinated. "So they shut the place down over this one idiot?"

He's so far gone he can't tell if he wants to laugh or cry. _Have to look up that study_.

"Naw, the warden was doing a bunch of illegal things too—kickbacks, health code violations, the whole bit. The investigation just set the whole thing off."

"Of the idiot who got himself locked up," Eames adds.

_Subtle, Eames_.

"Yeah." The cop looks at them with some suspicion. "Who did you say you were again?"

"Oh, we didn't." Eames flashes her badge and grins. "I'm Detective Eames, and this is my partner"—emphasis on the word _partner_—"Detective Goren. Major Case."

All the blood drains out of the cop's face and Eames smirks. "I…uh…tell that cop that I hope he's feeling better and everything."

Eames' smirk deepens. "Will do."

Goren interrupts, because they need to get back to the point. "So what happened to all the patients who were here? Are they going to be coming back eventually?"

The cop snorts. "From what I hear they're shutting this place down for good and building a mini-mart."

"What about the _patients_?" he asks again, an edge creeping into his voice.

"Dispersed. Some went to different wards, some went to hospitals—I heard a couple kids just fled during the transfer."

"Is there any way we can find out who went where?" Eames asks, touching her partner lightly on the elbow as though she can sense the frustration building up in him.

"Try Mitchell over there." The cop points to a guy so faded looking that Goren can't believe he's the one in charge. There are important matters here—shouldn't someone _competent _be in charge? "He's in charge."

Mitchell produces a list of the patients and their locations, but it doesn't matter because it's just that, names and locations, and Goren doesn't know the roommate's name. And no matter how much he tries to remember even the number of the room Donny was in, he can't, and it's irritatinghim even more.

"I don't know," he keeps muttering to himself. "I don't know."

Eames pulls him into a secluded corner and he shakes her touch off because everything's starting to spin again and he's perilously close to tears and the only thought he can focus on is finding Donny.

"We need to go," Eames says firmly, taking her hand off his shoulder but standing right in front of him so he can't just brush her off and leave.

He shakes his head. "There's more we can do here. There's…evidence, probably. I'm sure we can narrow Donny's fingerprints down to one particular room he was in a lot, probably, and then run the other prints in the room, and narrow it down to people who could have been his roommate—"

"You have to calm down."

"You said you would help look for Donny," he spits back at her. "You—you said we could—"

"I know what I said." She reaches out again and grips his arm tightly. "And we will. We _are_. But there's nothing else we can do here at Tates. We'll go to the library and find out who worked here, and then we'll try to track them down and talk to them. But you have to stay calm, Bobby. You have to realize that we might not find him right away. It might take weeks. It doesn't sound like he wants to be found."

He can't speak so he just nods, shakily, and pushes his fingers on to the bridge of his nose.

"All right?" Eames asks. He closes his eyes and doesn't answer. She moves closer to him. "Bobby."

"It's this place," he chokes out, wiping furiously at his eyes. Eames doesn't say anything, doesn't touch him, just stands in front of him and shields him from the eyes of anyone possibly watching. She waits until he pulls himself together and then leads him out to the car without another word.

"This was a bad idea," he murmurs as he slides into the passenger seat, still scrubbing at his face. "I shouldn't have come out here. I should have stayed in Manhattan and just looked for Donny there, tried to find _Frank _again, the fucker."

Eames puts the key in the ignition but doesn't turn it on, instead turning to face him. "I don't think there are any right or wrong choices in this," she says softly. "You just go with what you think until you find him. And you will. You _will_. But it's going to take some time."

"I'm not a very patient person," he murmurs.

"Gee, really?"

He lifts his eyes to hers and sees nothing but compassion. "You are, though."

"I'm what?" she murmurs.

"Patient. With me. With all this…with everything. And…thanks." He can't think of the right words to say, the right order to put the words into, but he has to keep talking. "I owe you so much."

"You don't owe me anything," Eames says, her voice a ghost of the tone he had used last night to say the same thing.

"But I do. I do. And…I want you to know that I recognize that." There's more to be said, but he can't, at this point, so he lets it drop. She understands, and despite the fact that they are in a parking lot with other cops, despite the fact that they don't typically touch, she leans forward and hugs him and he hugs her back, feeling dwarfed by her presence—overwhelmed, even.

"We'll find him."

"I know."

They stay like this for a long time.

When they do finally pull apart Eames turns the key in the ignition, Bobby blows his nose, and they drive off to the library to continue searching. Together. Because really, what else is there?

_~~Complete~~_


End file.
